Living with a question

By Phil Brown

Synod Executive

Last spring I had the opportunity to speak to a group of college graduates – commencement at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. It proved to be a fascinating challenge for me because I’m more accustomed to addressing some shape and form of a church group.

It’s a pretty heady experience to be asked to address commencement, but when I thought about it, I realized – and this may be true for you – that I couldn’t remember much about any commencement in which I’d received a degree.

So I did a little research among friends and colleagues and sure enough, the same response. They’d say, “I don’t even remember who spoke.” But they all said assuredly, “I’m certain you’ll do just fine, Phil.” How encouraging.

This could be a futile effort, I thought. It will take a lot of work to prepare something and the graduates won’t remember anything – possibly by the time they recess.

Without more detail about getting to the next step, I finally thought of the challenge posited to my younger son during his graduate school experience. His faculty advisor affirmed Jess’ disciplined study habits, but he challenged Jess to prepare a question for each class or lab time based on his preparation.

It reminded me of a quote by Albert Einstein: “If I had one hour to find an answer to something on which my life depended, I’d spend the first 55 minutes framing the right question. Once I did that, I know I can resolve the problem in less than five minutes.”

Jess’ advisor observed that it’s one thing to prepare and take in all the reading and note writing, but it’s quite another to craft a question for the next classroom or lab experience. The effect, the professor said, is that the process expands your learning capacity. Your antenna will be up, the advisor said. Your mind will be seeking uses, looking for what’s different, inquiring about what’s missing, asking what you need to know. It’s the way you need to examine the material you consume before coming to class.

That’s a great idea.

But it wasn’t the end of the challenge.

The advisor urged him to shape another question coming away from his classroom or lab experience. It’s a question that looks ahead. You want to know where all that leads. You want to know what you’ve learned. You want to know what’s missing. You want to know about the impact of what you’ve just seen or heard.

The advisor assured him that to leave a class, an experience, with a question on his mind will open up the whole world for a response.

The instruction – to carry a question – is as valuable to us as it is to any graduate student.

When I do, I receive input from surprising places, people and sources because my life is living a question rather than answer.